A federal appeals court Wednesday agreed to consider whether to overturn the death penalty for "Freeway Killer" William Bonin, who was convicted of killing 14 boys and young men. If he loses the appeal and final reviews by the U.S. Supreme Court, Bonin could be the next person executed in California. Several other federal appeals have failed for Bonin, who is on Death Row in San Quentin. On Wednesday, the U.S.

The nine Pennsylvania coal miners rescued Saturday after three days underground have sold the TV-movie and book rights to their story to divisions of Walt Disney Co. for $150,000 apiece, according to the Pittsburgh attorney representing the men. Thomas Crawford, who specializes in criminal tax and labor law, said the deal includes a movie for Disney's ABC network and a book that will be published by the Burbank company's book arm, Hyperion Publishing. An ABC spokesman declined to comment Friday.

There's a crass old joke about how you can never buy beer, just rent it. Who would think that the same joke applies to book buying in the digital age? But that's the case. Many people who'll be unwrapping iPads, Amazon Kindles or Barnes & Noble Nooks on Tuesday morning and loading them with bestsellers or classics won't have any idea how limited their rights are as their books' "owners. " In fact, they won't be owners at all. They'll be licensees. Unlike the owners of a physical tome, they won't have the unlimited right to lend an e-book, give it away, resell it or leave it to their heirs.

Random House Inc. has asked a federal judge to bar a publisher of electronic books from copying works of William Styron, Kurt Vonnegut, and Robert Parker and selling them over the Internet. Random House, a unit of Bertelsmann AG, the world's third largest media company, says rival RosettaBooks LLC has cherry-picked eight important titles, including "Sophie's Choice" and "Slaughterhouse-Five," copied them in digital format, and begun selling them online.

A jury of 12 people was seated Friday for the murder trial of sniper suspect John Allen Muhammad. Opening statements in the trial of the 42-year-old Army veteran are expected to begin Monday. The jury, with three alternates, includes some members with ties to the military -- an expected mix in a community with large Navy installations. The 10 women and five men, 13 whites and two blacks were culled from a pool of 123.

Police have begun randomly searching school buses for drugs, pulling youths off the vehicles on the way to or from school and boarding the buses with drug-sniffing dogs. The school district policy, billed as an effort to discourage students from bringing illegal substances onto school grounds, has been carried out three times since Oct. 30, most recently Wednesday afternoon at Portola Middle School.

A jury Friday awarded nearly $7.6 million to the wife of a man stabbed to death by jailhouse author Jack Henry Abbott, rejecting the convicted killer's argument that she did not deserve a penny. "A little excessive, I would say," Abbott, 46, remarked to the judge after the jury announced its verdict in a state court in Manhattan. Abbott killed Richard Adan with a single stab wound to the heart outside an East Greenwich Village restaurant nine years ago after an argument.

What's next, "The Sword and the Skateboard"? The hottest hero in Hollywood this season appears to be King Arthur. At least 10 studio projects are being developed around Arthur and his knights of the Round Table. "I think it's everybody's fantasy to be a king and there's a tremendous interest in King Arthur," says former Hollywood Pictures executive Andrew Z. Davis, explaining His Majesty's sudden popularity.